


Aren't We All Just Waiting

by AshToSilver



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 14:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1269883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshToSilver/pseuds/AshToSilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owls eat bats. The boy will consume his own father, in a rush of blood and fur and feathers and darkness, if time has its way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aren't We All Just Waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TimmyJaybird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimmyJaybird/gifts).



> Short prompt fill for Mads on Tumblr. I listed this as Batman/Joker, even though it doesn't technically come up as that, it still is set in some continuum in which they're in a relationship.
> 
>  **EDIT Aug/2016:** I have changed my username, I am now going by AshToSilver on AO3 and [my new Tumblr](http://ashtosilver.tumblr.com/)! You can still call me Alex, but I no longer have a day of the week in my name.

Joker has made an entire career out of  _not thinking about Robins_.

There are plenty of absolutely valid reasons why this is something he does. Reasons number one is probably  _they aren’t bats_  and reason one hundred is probably something along the lines of  _still not bats, fucker_.

So he  _might of_  beat up one or two of them - severely, but who’s keeping track? That second one didn’t even count, he didn’t  _stay dead_  - and after the Bat went and replaced them, he sort of started ignored them.

Then there was the thing with the place and the replacement bat-who-was-not-a-bat and that was when the boy appeared. But Joker ignored him because the bat-who-was-not-a-bat was flying about cracking jokes and the whole thing was like a really surreal dream.

Then he  _noticed_  the latest little bird. The little bird with the scowl and the cape and this way of showing only a couple of teeth in an angry face only bats got. Primitive and dangerous, something humans just didn’t  _do_.

(There was this thing, you see, about bats and clowns and animals. Humans were the only species in the world where showing teeth was considered friendly. Anywhere else, any other species, and you’re  _fucked_.)

And the thing was, Robins were generally little boys, not little animals. This new one, on the other hand, was a bat in the making. Anger bubbled under a thin layer of control and it came forth in claws and fangs and little growls that barely rumbled.

There were plenty of times, when he meant to open his mouth and say,  _hey batsy, you gotten up to anything with someone - say, about ten years ago?_  But he doesn’t. He can’t  _spoil_  it.

This little bird - he’s a hawk waiting for his flight feathers to come in. He’s got claws that’ll go straight for the heart if you’re not careful.

(Except  _hawk_ isn’t right, not right at all. Hawks’ are noisy and come out during the day and that just won’t  _do_ for little birds that are really bats except  _not_.)

Just once, the Joker hears of a kill the boy made.  _The boy killed before his bat ever did._ He hears about this later because the bat is  _devastated_ and when he’s devastated, clowns have a habit of getting involved.

"I can’t hate him for it." And the bat’s voice breaks. "He’s my son, he’s my blood, I could never hate him."

 _Oh_. Thinks Joker.

Not a hawk at all. Hawks are petty things.

No, the boy’s an  _owl_. Swift, silent, deadly and dark and worst of all-

Owls eat bats. The boy will consume his own father, in a rush of blood and fur and feathers and darkness, if time has its way.

(And because of this, the Joker discovers he could find room in his chest to love two. He’d have to. He couldn’t live without the bat and the fledgling couldn’t either.)

And if the boy stares, stares like his bat does, there are even days that Joker thinks he won’t let loose his feathers.

He’s too much like the bat. Maybe he’ll never snap.

And that’ll be okay.

(It’s the first time, really, that he’s ever said that.)

**Author's Note:**

> I like the idea of Damian becoming an owl, and I might explore it in another fic at some point.


End file.
